Monday, 24 September 2012

Monday Musings - Series Fiction or Stand-Alone Books?

I just read an awesome blog post over at
Julie’s Blog about series burn out, and it inspired me to write my own thoughts
on series and stand-alone books.

There are so many series out there today
that it can seem hard to find a decent stand-alone book. I think it’s easy to
see why most of the really smash-hit YA and children’s books published over the
last decade or so – thinking of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games and
Beautiful Creatures – have been series books. Readers get familiar with the
characters, they find an author whose writing style they like, and the best
authors manage to create cliffhangers that provide a partial resolution but
give you a compelling reason to read the next book.

SERIES BURN-OUT

Unfortunately, like Julie, I’m starting to
suffer from series burn out.Admittedly,
there are certainly some series out there which have got me desperately waiting
for the next installment – Michael Grant’s Gone, Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls,
Curtis Jobling’s Wereworld, Rick Yancey’s Monstrumologist and Susie Day’s Pea
all fit the bill there! In addition, two of my favourite books so far this year
brought trilogies to a conclusion – the stunning Another Life by Keren David
and the wonderful A Reckless Magick (which I’ll be reviewing this week) by
Stephanie Burgis.

However, there seem to be a lot of other
series out there which just aren’t capturing my attention at the moment. Rachel
Caine’s The Morganville Vampires is one where I’ve got partway through and just
can’t motivate myself to read on (that’s partly vampire burn out as well, to be
fair to Caine!) while Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers is another which I’m
struggling with slightly – I love the central concept and quite enjoyed books
one and two but just knowing there’s so many more to read to get to the end has
got me putting them to one side in my current mood.

CLIFFHANGERS GOOD AND BAD

As well, the cliffhanger ending is capable
of really annoying me. It can be done
brilliantly – Jillian Larkin’s Ingenue is a great example of how to bring a
book to a satisfying conclusion but provide a tease that makes readers want to
come back. Cora Harrison’s Debutantes is the first in a series but you wouldn’t
know it from the ending, which is perfect – she’s obviously trusting in her
fabulous characters to bring the readers back with no need for a cliffhanger,
and it’s definitely worked for me – I can’t wait for book 2!

Too often, though, there seems to be an
ending which barely resolves anything – The Masque of the Red Death by Bethany
Griffin being the worst recent offender in my eyes, closely followed by The Hunting by Sam Hawksmoor (which I believe was originally set to be the
conclusion of Genie Magee’s tale, but the series has now been changed to three
books – not a good decision, at least in my opinion.) The second and third
books in John Marsden’s Tomorrow series also suffer a bit from this. For me to
not feel at least slightly cheated by an ending, there has to be a sense of at
least partial closure, I think. (There are exceptions to that rule, as well,
though – Michael Grant’s Fear and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood
Prince both pulled off endings I’d normally dislike, mainly because I was so
invested in the characters that the authors seemed to have ‘earned’ the right
to tantalise us like they did.)

STAND-ALONES AND LINKED BOOKS

If you’re reading a stand-alone, of course,
there are other issues! When I finish a book like Second Chance Summer by
Morgan Matson or The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, it’s great to have the
story resolved but I feel sad at the thought of not reading about such
wonderful characters again.

Perhaps my favourite solution to this
dilemma is when an author writes books which are linked, but aren’t really
series books. Regular readers probably know all about my love for the work of Jaclyn Moriarty,
whose books are all set inAshbury High
and have characters cropping up in bit parts, but each focus on a different
group of students (apart from Finding Cassie Crazy and Dreaming of Amelia,
which both follow Emily and Lydia as two of their main characters.) Similarly,
I was thrilled to find out that Katie McGarry’s next book will see Beth, a
supporting character from Pushing The Limits, take centre stage, and I loved
the way that Keris Stainton followed up Jessie Hearts NYC with Emma Hearts LA,
giving my favourite character from the earlier book the chance to stand out on
her own.

What does everyone else think on the series
fiction vs stand-alone books debate? I’d love to read your replies in the
comments section!

21 comments:

Timely post, Jim. I'm all for stand alones. I mean, there's nothing that I love more than a series, especially if you're a kid or a teen, and even when you're as old as me. But I don't want any kind of cliffhanger in any of the books. And I want to be able to start in the middle or the end and finish at the beginning of a series - with minimal spoilers all the way through. That might be tough to write - or publish (especially if you have a planned trilogy), but that's what I like best. I'm starting to avoid books that have the word trilogy or quartet or sequence or cycle in them - when the author is just about to publish book one.

Thanks for commenting! I CAN'T start anywhere except book one, personally. I can skip around in series like Chalet School or Abbey Girls where they're really difficult to get hold of and I'll almost certainly never manage to reach them all - but if possible I'm slightly obsessive about having to read series in sequence.

Little M's the same as you! I try to be like that (and I think that gives the reader the most fulfilment) but when I was a kid, I lived in a country where books were extortionately priced and I got what I could in the public library (or what was on my parents' shelves). If I'd waited for Book 1, I might have missed out on a lot. Similarly, publishers have recently commented on Twitter that bookshops don't always stock the whole series (probably like never!), so it's extra tricky then to start with book one unless you go online.

Fascinating post - and thanks for the shout-out for my books! I'd like to point out that authors often have no power over how a series develops - often publishers will cancel a series just because they haven't sold enough copies of the first few books in a short time period. So the author is left with a load of plotlines just hanging - a horrible position to be in. I planned the first book as a standalone, then thought the second would be the final one..still rather surprised it has turned out to be a trilogy after all, b ut I'm pleased because I think it works well as a set of three.

As a reader it's incredibly frustrating when a series gets cancelled, so as an author it must be a hundred times worse! I remember being stunned when Simon and Schuster dropped the Monstrumologist after 3 books (and hugely relieved when they picked up book four after fan outcry.)

I definitely think the Ty series works best as a trilogy - although if you changed your mind and published a fourth/spin-off I'd be first in line to read it!

I think there is an important distinction to be made between series which seem to be imagined as an ongoing journey which will continue until the author runs out of inspiration, and trilogies or 4 book sets which are clearly conceived as a single plot arc spread over a defined number of books.

It's interesting that series are so much more common in children's and YA fiction than in adult fiction. Obviously there are marketing reasons, but I think another important reason is length. It's quite hard to sell a debut YA novel that's more than 80,000 words, which sounds a lot, but is actually not that much space to cram in a complicated plot arc. I wasn't intending to write a trilogy with A Witch in Winter but about a third of the way through I just realised that it was going to take massively much more room than I would ever be allowed in a single book to tell the story.

Definitely agree on the distinction, Ruth! I think that was one of the reasons The Monstrumologist being dropped annoyed me - because it's clearly got a plot arc which hasn't been finished yet.

'Ongoing journeys' seem more common in adult fiction than YA (although there's always the possibility I'm blanking out on some!) The two that spring to mind are the Stephanie Plum series, which I loved up to about book eight but just seems to be repeating itself every book now, and the Jack Reacher series, which... well, also seems to be repeating itself every book but which I'm still really enjoying for some reason!

I was thinking about older series having more of a fashion for ongoing - with EB, the CS and the Abbey Girls being the three that sprung to mind - but I managed to forget to mention them while writing that 9-line comment, bad even by my own short attention span standards!

I think you're definitely right in that paranormal/fantasy series are much more common these days than contemporary - the only 'straight' contemporary/realistic YA series that spring to mind for me are Jenny Han's 'Summer' trilogy, Keren David's 'Ty' books, Tammara Webber's 'Between the Lines' and Simone Elkeles' Fuentes Brothers novels. Keris Stainton's 'Hearts' fall more into the category of 'linked' books than series for me because Emma's the only character to play a significant role in both.

There are some fab contemporary series which count more as MG than YA, though - Susie Day's wonderful Pea books, Cathy Hopkins' series, Karen McCombie's superb Ally's World and Stella Etc.

Which YA contemporary series are out there that I'm not remembering, readers? (If there are any that I've reviewed and forgotten about please be gentle when reminding me - I haven't been awake that long!)

Hilary McKay's Casson famiy books - they are MG but never mind, if you haven't read them you should! Louise Rennison Angus Thongs etc. Then there are the Gossip Girls books, Cathy Hopkins Mates Dates series (MG or YA, not sure). Anne Cassidy has just started a new contemporary crime series with Bloomsbury. Fiona Dunbar's Kitty Slade series is excellent, but also MG.

I don't think I've ever read any Sophie McKenzie other than her stand-alone Falling Fast - but should still have remembered them! Mates, Dates is one I'd class as MG more than YA, it was the main one I was thinking of when I mentioned Hopkins above. I've only read one of Rennison's but would have said it was MG? (A long time ago, though - and bizarrely it's the only one I've ever had a parent complain about when I was teaching and a 13-year old got it out of my classroom library!)

As for Gossip Girl... of all the book bloggers in all the world to forget Gossip Girl, how did it happen to me? Which reminds me, of course, of other stuff like Private and The A List. (And has pretty much blown tomorrow's YAContemporary.com post apart!)

YES! I agree. I always have that sinking feeling when I am getting to the end of the book and realise that there is no way that all the loose ends can be tied up in the remaining pages. I don't mind a trilogy, if each part is almost self contained. The struggles of the story world may go on, but I like for the current story to have a conclusion, even if temporary. I know that a second part of a trilogy can be hard but often they feel like a bridging novel and that isso disatisfying. I have given up Lauren Kate's Fallen series for this reason, and in spite of enjoying Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush Hush, have stopped reading the others after the second.I'm now at a point where trilogy writers get more points in my book, if they can end book two (let alone book one) without the words to be continued.... Both Maggie Stiefvater and Melissa Marr do a good job of concluding a story, while leaving their "world" open for further visits. For contemporary YA, Sara Dessen focusses on different characters set in the same town and a nearby seaside town, giving a continuity of world, with pleasing crossover references, but with self contained stories.

Fallen is one that I loved originally but am struggling to finish myself, while Hush Hush doesn't really appeal to me. I'm just about to read my first ever Melissa Marr and looking forward to it! Sarah Dessen is a great shout as someone else I forgot originally - she's a perfect example of the 'linked books' with, as you said, some great references in between books but stories that stand alone.

Really great post! Those are all excellent points. While I do LOVE series, I'm in the middle of soooo many. It's hard to keep up with all of them and some of them just go on for too long. It's nice to find a refreshing standalone so I can start, end, and feel satisfied with how things ended! Or even companions like Anna and the French Kiss/Lola and the Boy Next Door. They weren't a series, yet they were still somewhat tied together but with their own original stories.

I'm really late to this party, but I'm a little tired of series books lately. I want more completed stories that are finished in one book. I feel bad when I start a sequel or a book mid-series and I'm not entirely sure what had happened in the previous book.

Also, I saw in a comment above that you thought Falling Fast by Sophie McKenzie was a standalone. It isn't, it's the first in a trilogy! The second book is coming out in January!

There are still some series that I'm excited about. I love Louise Rennison and while the Georgia series is finished, I'm still excited about Talullah.

Also, why is it that paranormal YA is mostly series based? Soul Screamers, the Bloodlines series, and so many others.. I'm still reading some of them, but it's paranormal overload to start too many different series so I definitely have to limit myself.

I hadn't realised until a few days ago there was more in the Falling Fast series - but at least that WORKS as a book in its own right, even if there are more to come. I did a blog over at YA contemporary last week because contemporary appears to be pretty much the only place you get ANY significant number of stand alones; as you say paranromal is overloaded with series and dystopian/fantasy/historical are in a similar position.

Great post, Jim! And yes, the dilemma of a YA writer. When I first proposed my first YA novel to an agent friend, one of the first things he asked was "Can it be a series?" Sadly, no. It's a "stand alone" story -- and what's so wrong with that, I wondered?

Most of my favorite books from childhood are stand-alone (imagine Charlotte's Web as a series -- after Charlotte is dead! Though those 3 runts of hers did stick around to keep Wilbur company... And Disney did it with Charlotte's Web 2 on DVD).

I agree with what you say about there not being a need for a cliffhanger. The series that I'm currently working on -- if my agent can ever find me a publisher -- I don't plan to end with a "cliff hanger" but just a continuation of the story. The one book ends and the next begins where the last one left off... As if it's one long 750 page book, broken up into three 250 page parts. At least that's what I'm planning to do -- if I ever get the chance to write it.